Art, Esotericism and the Ecological Imagination
When the art, visual culture, and creative practices of the ecological imaginationare informed by esotericism, they reveal rejected knowledge and recover enchanted relationships. In recent years scholarship has expanded significantly in the fields of art and ecology, and art and esotericism, but intersections between all three categories remain underexplored.
Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm have noted one of the analytically most powerful capabilities of the concept of the esoteric is its ability to shine light on the ‘betwixt and between’ and phenomena that transgress seemingly impermeable borders. Esoteric thinking resists boundaries, linearities of time and progress, and conformity to anthropocentrism. Esotericism has long held the imagination as an important faculty to transcend the mundane and the human, the everyday and the present. Similarly, environmental philosophers have evoked the imagination to negotiate and conceive, simulate and project increasingly complex world systems. As Diana Villanueva-Romero, Lorraine Kerslake and Carmen Flys-Junquera have demonstrated, artworks promote environmental awareness through the exercise of imaginative processes, paving the way for encounters of affective knowledge between us and ‘other’ – the ‘more-than-human’. With the creative potential and possibilities of these mutual imaginative forces – both esoteric and ecological – artists explore alternative entanglements with the natural and supernatural, visualising the interconnectivity and reciprocity between planes, scales and beings.
What are the visual manifestations and wider implications of the ecological imagination when it unites with esotericism? How are alternative entanglements conceived, envisioned and given form? The papers in this session investigate the intersections of art, esotericism and ecology in their broadest sense, including interdisciplinary approaches and artists’ presentations.
Session Convenors:
Michelle Foot, University of Edinburgh
Natasha V. Moody, Arts University Plymouth & Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices
Speakers:
Anna-Maria Hällgren, Umeå University
This Means Something: Navigating the Liminal Space of Not-Yet-Knowing in Academic Research
This paper explores the often-unspoken role of intuition in scholarly work, arguing that it should be recognized as a valuable – indeed, sometimes necessary – part of the intellectual process. Intuitive thinking embraces non-linear, interconnected methods that align with both esoteric and ecological models of knowledge. As both an academic scholar and a visual artist, I find that unconventional yet beneficial approaches emerge. This will be exemplified through an ongoing project examining the use of darkness and light in Western imagery, as seen in works by artists separated in both time and tradition. By converging domains often seen as distinct – ecology and esotericism, academic research and artistic practice – this paper explores alternative ways of knowing, perceiving, and representing the world. This convergence is particularly critical, as ecological thought increasingly demands imaginative approaches to understand complex, interconnected systems, non-linear temporalities, and relationships between human and more-than-human entities.
Emily Leon, Independent scholar
An Exploration of Spirit Art: Mediumism and Plant-Human Entanglement
The art world has taken an interest in plant-human entanglement in recent years. Yet, it is infrequent to encounter scholarship in the history of art that explores where vegetal and spirit life merge in the visual and material culture of spiritualism. Primary source material from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century illustrates a symbiotic relationship between plants, spirits, and mediums that suggest plants are active participants in mediumistic communication. This paper prioritizes the participation of plants and investigates post-mortem consciousness and the ecological imagination through an analysis of automatic drawing, as well as first-person accounts of spirit drawing. I ask: Do mediums ‘think’ with plants? Are spirits of the dead entangled with plant matter? Do plants act as guides for spirits in the afterlife?
I examine these questions through a phenomenological lens, blending insights from art history, critical plants studies, and theoretical physics. Philosopher Paul Crowther’s post-analytic phenomenological aesthetics offers the analytical tools necessary to negotiate and explore the visual space of automatic drawings, while philosopher Michael Marder’s concept of ‘plant- thinking’ provides a preliminary critical framework for exploring multi-species interaction and interconnectivity between the human and non-human. Finally, through the application of physicist Bernard Carr’s universal structure theory, I speculate on the possibility of a higher dimensional space where plants mediate the encounter between spiritual and physical worlds. I contend that the visual and material culture of spiritualism can tell us something more about plant intelligence and the more-than-human world.
Fanny Curtat, Université du Québec à Montréal
Undecidably Esoteric: Divination, Modernity and Ecology in the Work of Benoît Pype
Over the last 30 years, esoteric references in contemporary art have been proliferating. Yet the notion of belief which shadows esotericism remains an uncomfortable fit for an art world still marked by the theory of the disenchantment of the world. Amid an ecological crisis underlining the troubled relationship between knowing and believing — as Jean-Pierre Dupuy noted, the biggest obstacle against climate change is that we do not believe what we know — and in which many anthropologists turn to ancient cosmologies to find different ways to inhabit the planet, the art world often struggles to make sense of the intersection between esotericism, belief, art and ecology. While esotericism is often cited as an alternative to Modernity —understood in the sense of Bruno Latour as a mindset dominated by Reason, and widely considered as the main culprit of the current crisis — the art world’s persistence in perceiving esotericism in terms of radical otherness impedes the possibility of conceptualizing just how it could function as an alternative. Relying on the work of Jacques Rancière, I suggest the notion of an “undecidable esotericism” as a way of navigating between the frameworks of esotericism and Modernity. Through the analysis of Chutes libres (2013-2015)by French artist Benoît Pype, which refers to the mantic practice of molybdomancy,this paper will focus on the development of what I call the rhetoric of correspondences as a way of grasping and illustrating the epistemological efficacy of esotericism in contemporary art in the context of the ecological crisis.
Judith Noble, Arts University Plymouth & Sarah King, Arts University Plymouth
Waking Between Worlds
Artists Judith Noble and Sarah King engage deeply with the interplay between the human and the more-than-human. Noble’s work, rooted in lunar and tidal cycles, springs from the wild landscapes of Ynys Mon conjured through trance walks into the otherworld, guided by spirits known since childhood. This animist perspective informs works including text and image, moving image and artist’s books co-created with the elements, allowing tidal action and marine life to shape the work. King delves into the emotional duality of loss through the lens of theories of abjection and the uncanny. Her exploration of gathering, caring and repairing uses found fabrics as metaphors for lost objects, embodying a sense of fragility; magic through materials of memory, connection and loss.
Noble explores relationships between place, memory and deep time, re-photographing geologist Edward Greenly’s rock drawings and placing them in rock pools where they are transformed over time. King collects materials from coastal sites and dresses rocks with fabric, creating assemblages that memorialise individual and collective histories.
Both artists perform acts of conjuring, caring and repairing, seeking a place where the human and more-than-human can co-exist, navigating a vulnerable place between worlds at the edge of the deep imaginal. In this presentation, Noble and King will present their recent work. The presentation will contain performative elements.